Anthropic vs. The Pentagon, Bloodbath at Block, The Citrini Selloff

19:15Ranjan Roy:Okay. No, no. Okay. I'll give you that. Waymo as basically RoboCop coming to life. Get in the car. Anti-RoboCop here. Yeah, okay, I can see that. But going back to the PR standpoint, it is. I was trying to be level-headed and take this kind of genuinely seriously, but this is just like, and I mean, I have to imagine we'll get into open AI. And I mean, Sam Altman even came out and said that the company would potentially be working with the Pentagon. I think it's -

19:50Big Technology Podcast:Same restrictions, by the way, with OpenAI. And Sam is like, well, we're just going to hope that we can defuse. We'd like to try to help deescalate things.

19:58Ranjan Roy:Yeah.

19:59Big Technology Podcast:That's just OpenAI being like, OpenAI agreeing with my statement that this is not a real disagreement yet. And so therefore, let's go ahead.

20:08Ranjan Roy:Where's Sundar going to fall on this? That's what I want to know.

20:11Big Technology Podcast:He's going to sit back and he's going to be like, we're printing. We don't have to be involved in this. This is great.

20:16Ranjan Roy:Well, you got to have a monopolistic ad business, just printing cash and making Gemini better. Don't have to worry about autonomous weapons.

20:24Big Technology Podcast:I mean, you can't pay for marketing like this. And I'm sorry if this comes off too cynical, but this is an Axios. This is from a defense official. The only reason we're still talking to these people is we need them and we need them now. The problem for these guys is they are that good. You can't pay for that type of marketing.

20:42Ranjan Roy:That's why it is. But it is interesting how, okay, again, not trying to be too cynical here again, like Claude catches Maduro, great headline, great marketing, kind of just not exciting. Which is not what happened. But that's the narrative in the meme. But then, yeah, Dario realizing this is a great opportunity for us both to be the ethical AI company to kind of, I mean, it's a pretty good positioning nowadays if you're like setting yourself up for that conflict to have the headsets of the world kind of like coming at you on Twitter that actually can help your case. So, yeah, I do think, yeah, again, I never would have thought on the subject of autonomous warfare, I would say it's a meh story.

21:38Ranjan Roy:But I agree on this one. And they just raise their giant round. They don't need this marketing. They already have enough, but good for Don.

21:48Big Technology Podcast:If you think they don't need the marketing, I think you're underestimating the level of competition right now. Every bit of marketing helps.

21:55Ranjan Roy:Yeah.

21:55Big Technology Podcast:I mean, think about it. It almost follows the same line as the Super Bowl ad, right? Like, Claude won't ever do ads. Claude won't, you know, kill you in your sleep.

22:06Ranjan Roy:That should have been the Super Bowl ad.

22:08Big Technology Podcast:I think I just run this fan fiction of this episode. But I think that, like, ultimately, like, there is still, I think part, I don't want to say it's entirely cynical marketing. I think part of Dario really does believe that this is not the uses that Claude should be used for. And I think on the Pentagon side, you can totally see their side as well, where they're like, we don't want to be in a mission critical moment and have Dario say, you're not ready to do this.

22:35Ranjan Roy:Actually, so where do you fall on model companies like regulating, I guess, I don't know if that's the correct word, but use cases. Again, companionship, AI erotica, we've debated in the past. And open AI has one view of it versus others. Like, do you think as this evolves, and I mean, it almost kind of comes down back to the great content moderation debates of Facebook and others. Like, do they have the responsibility to do that moderation? Because I do kind of think they do, but this is just going to get messier and messier and more and more complex.

23:17Big Technology Podcast:Yeah, I think they do. I mean, I think that if you're a private company, you have at least the right, if not the responsibility, to try to make sure your product is used in ways that you think are beneficial to society. I don't see what the problem is there.

23:31Ranjan Roy:That's so idealistic and optimistic.

23:33Big Technology Podcast:Well, allow me to take this moment to maybe not be as cynical as I've been in our first few minutes of this show and say, yeah, I think that is important.

23:42Ranjan Roy:Tech companies have some responsibility to society writ large.

23:47Big Technology Podcast:that's the i mean i know it's controversial to say that's that's a hot take but i can see people just hitting play on something else right now but uh but that's where i'm i'm gonna stand there i'll die on that hill but it's not this is not without potential consequences for anthropics let's talk about it uh in preparing for they might the pentagon might now label anthropic a supply chain risk and pentagon officials from the journal have reached out to defense contractors, including Lockheed Martin and Boeing in recent days, to gauge how much they use Claude. I love that scene, by the way. It's like, can you imagine the Pentagon on the line with like Boeing and being like, how much Claude do you use?

24:26Big Technology Podcast:Because we might ban it for this hypothetical reason. Now, are we not going to be able to make planes anymore? It's just crazy that we've, ChatGPT came out three years ago and we're at this stage already. Critical infrastructure right now.

24:37Ranjan Roy:Yeah. Yeah, I think, I mean, that's the politics element. I guess that is kind of like that part is almost more terrifying to me in the actual near term of, again, like if that level of kind of like tit for tat Twitter fighting can actually lead to like that, you know, some kind of like the supply chain risk application actually kind of like derailing a private business. That I don't like.

25:11Big Technology Podcast:They might also invoke the Defense Production Act, which would require Anthropic to supply its technology to the Pentagon the way the Pentagon wants, which would be unprecedented. Again, I mean, the tweets coming through the timeline this week, and I know Twitter is not real life, but a lot of people in the AI world, a lot of buyers are paying attention to this. Here's from another Twitter user. Best proof Anthropic has that it has the best internal models. The Pentagon would rather invoke the Defense Production Act than use someone else's AI.

25:41Ranjan Roy:Do you think they get rate limited?

25:45Big Technology Podcast:Maybe that's what actually started.

25:48Ranjan Roy:Actually, they were like about to capture. Actually, this might be too dark, but I was going to say that's why we didn't invade Iran yet. They're getting rate limited on Claude.

26:00Big Technology Podcast:I don't know, Roger. I'm not going to go there. I'm going to take that one back. I don't know. Maybe by the time we publish this podcast.

26:08Ranjan Roy:Anyways, let's move on to lighter news like funding rounds.

26:12Big Technology Podcast:All right. OpenAI announces$110 billion funding round with backing from Amazon, NVIDIA, and SoftBank. So finally here, the round we've been talking about, man, that was quite a transition with the round we've been talking about, has arrived. It is bigger than expected. Remember, it started out at$50 billion. Amazon, and then it went to$100 billion. Now it's$110. And this is from CNBC. Other investors are expected to join as the round progresses. So it's not even over. We just have these big commitments from these three big companies. $50 billion from Amazon. I mean, that's wild. Speaking of Dario, I wonder how he's feeling now that one of his biggest partners in Amazon is making a deal like this with OpenAI.

26:56Big Technology Podcast:We won't spend too much time on it. But Ranjan, your takeaway from the size of the round, who's in and any other things. I love how we're going to glaze over the biggest funding round of all time.

27:07Ranjan Roy:Only in February 2026 could a$110 billion round in a private market actually be like, let's not spend too much time on it. But I think I want to call out it being, and I'm very glad that OpenAI is making, again, this funding round the most OpenAI-ish thing possible because$110 billion is the headline. It is impossible to tell what the actual round is because, again, from the information, Amazon's decision to invest up to$50 billion in OpenAI could hang on whether OpenAI goes public or reaches a loosely defined milestone known as artificial general intelligence. That was my favorite part because we might after we lost that benchmark with Microsoft and OpenAI, but now it's back.

27:55Ranjan Roy:And this idea of like declaring AGI actually potentially unlocking tens of billions of dollars, it's back again. And and again, we have our benchmark here on the podcast. Waymo's operating in New York City officially will mean AGI is here. But I think, I don't know, did you, like the complexity of the funding, do you call this, do you genuinely call this$110 billion round? There's so many stipulations here.

28:21Big Technology Podcast:No, it's not. It's not, certainly not that. I think it's a very important point that you're calling out here. I mean, remember when OpenAI and NVIDIA said that they were going to do$100 billion together and it was another one of these, well, it's$10 billion now and in time. Turns out that$100 billion was actually$30 billion, which is what NVIDIA will be investing. Although Jensen Wanga said we hope they invite us to come back, but certainly an intent to invest$100 is very different from an actual action to invest$30. To me, the interesting thing here is what happens as a result of these major deals.

28:58Big Technology Podcast:So this is from CNBC. OpenAI said it's expanding its existing$38 billion agreement with Amazon Web Services by$100 billion over the next year, eight years. So it's going to get 50 from Amazon, but it's going to put back either 100 or 138.

29:19Ranjan Roy:That's why I'm so happy about this announcement. It's got everything. It's got kind of like nebulous benchmarks and tranches. It's got circular funding and financing. It's a classic Sam funding round. Again, as you said, potentially putting in 50, potentially over eight years, getting that$38 billion up to$100 billion. It's perfect open AI funding.

29:47Big Technology Podcast:That's right. Yeah. I mean, Sam was on CNBC earlier today and basically said, look, this is only going to work if the revenue goes up and answering the circular funding thing. And I think he's right. And it's only going to work if the revenue goes up. And that's basically it.

30:05Ranjan Roy:That's good business right there.

30:07Big Technology Podcast:Good business. But also like, yeah, of course, if the exponential continues, then we'll continue to get the money and it all makes sense. And if it doesn't, you won't get the money.

30:17Ranjan Roy:Yeah, I think, I mean, I definitely want to get into kind of like where you see OpenAI's business at this exact moment. But like one thing that was also interesting to me as well was there wasn't a lot of talk around like where this money gets invested into. Like in the old days of a year or two ago, I feel any of these big funding rounds would really kind of center around getting to that next generation model, building data centers. It was still a bit, I don't know, did you see anything? Like it still wasn't, there wasn't a big kind of flagship push around what this money actually is going to mean to both OpenAI and the ecosystem at large.

31:03Big Technology Podcast:Yeah, it has to be infrastructure. right and just the support for inference especially when you're working with partners like amazon and nvidia i think that's not an accident and open ai basically told us what the game is right they're like if we are able to build more infrastructure and serve more demand we're going to make more money and we'll keep building until that proves to be untrue so to me that's this is that's just um one step here along the way on that front well but where do you view

31:30Ranjan Roy:open AI competitively right now. I'm curious. I'm just going to say like, it is crazy to me. My chat GPT usage has declined dramatically between Gemini actually for like day-to-day, just basic stuff. I'm using a lot more like it just, again, and we've talked about switching costs and moat actually. And I know like the idea of memory, which everyone has been talking about for a long time is supposed to kind of start to build that moat. But it's still such a reminder to me of how brittle a lot of these kind of like foundations are that might seem again, what is it? 900 million users now?

32:08Big Technology Podcast:Yeah, they just said today, 900 million. Yeah, 900 million. So they're definitely on track for a billion by mid to late March. Yeah, exactly.

32:16Ranjan Roy:And again, ChatGPT is the like Google kind of like trademark brand name, whatever of like ai for the average person it's like a verb but still like i actually was looking this up the other day because i was curious back us on this show a year ago there were headlines anthropic was screwed like usage was going down on the consumer side and again massive credit to them they had such a clear bet and we we outlined this very early that like they were going all in on coding API. They were giving up the consumer product basically, and it worked brilliantly for them. But again, 12 months ago, 14 months ago, the narrative was very strongly, Anthropic is in a bad position.

33:05Ranjan Roy:It's kind of where perplexity is now. Open AI is just dominating. Gemini is on the rise. Two years ago, Gemini and Google are dead. It keeps reminding me just how quickly things can shift in this market right now.

33:20Big Technology Podcast:Yeah, it changes fast. I mean, obviously, like when people think about generative AI, they think about ChatGPT. That's what you hang your hat on right now if you're open AI. Some of the other bets, Sora, you know, haven't worked exactly according to plan. We still don't have the device. But I think that basically you have this two-pronged strategy. You're growing ChatGPT from the ground up. It's the leading consumer product. And you use that to leverage and move into enterprise. And yeah, they're making their move into coding. And it's very interesting now what's happening in the coding market, wouldn't you say?

33:56Big Technology Podcast:Because you have Cloud Code, which I've been in like crazy. I'm hitting my limits every couple hours just in Cloud Code. It's amazing. And there's some other players like Cursor that are starting to go up and down as the two big boys get involved. So what's happening with Cursor, Anjan? Okay.

34:16Ranjan Roy:So I wanted to highlight this story. There was one tweet from a Kyle Russell around how the company was removing 90 seats and basically over Slack, people were like, hey, can you unsub me from Cursor? Yeah, I'm not using it anymore too. And I think, again, this momentum, the speed and inflection with which people can shift or this idea of moat, it's just so fascinating to me because, again, a year ago, Cursor was synonymous with autonomous coding or CodeGen and any kind of AI-driven coding. And just how quickly people can switch, how the moat was never really there. And so I think it raises two questions.

35:02Ranjan Roy:Like one, does everything kind of like only condense to the foundation model labs? And my argument that it's the product, not the model is completely wrong. And if that happens, I will say that. But I think, like, to me, that was one side. The other, that the cursor story, and I mean, we don't know definitively, like, where things are internally for them from a revenue perspective. But, like, I hope that this starts to raise every claim around ARR or, like, annualized recurring revenue. That starts to go away. Because anyone who knows, it's like taking one month of data and extrapolating it times 12 when you have a good month.

35:47Ranjan Roy:I mean, there's like I've seen people joking, but maybe it's the case you have one week or one day in times by 365 and call it ARR. I think like in the market, actually trying to understand stickiness over time is going to become much, much more of like a valued thing right now.

36:06Big Technology Podcast:Yeah, I think that's great. I mean, I think that there's definitely been some title inflation when it comes to ARR, right? Like certainly companies are putting releases out there about ARR and you have to like, you know, kind of shake your head a little bit about, you know, is that really the number or not? But I think going back to your previous point, I think that's the most important point is that when it comes to AI applications, because of generative AI's general purpose nature, you always have to worry about one of the big companies gobbling up what you're doing. And certainly that's what's happened with Cursor, I think, is that Cloud Code, right, which was initially like, you know, seen as a frenemy or maybe just a different version of Cursor for different use cases.

36:53Big Technology Podcast:And it's not like not being an IDE, maybe. It's fully competitive now. And people are just working within code and they're working within codex. And so that's what's happening is the big models are just gobbling up smaller competition.

37:06Ranjan Roy:So question, 12 months from now, is Anthropics still the king of the hill or have things shifted again dramatically? Because if we're looking, there's some kind of directionally similar things. I mean, OpenAI is growing and raising more money, but still kind of who owns the narrative and conversation and kind of like the next wave of innovation? Do you think it's still Anthropics six months from now, 12 months from now?

37:34Big Technology Podcast:On coding? Yes.

37:36Ranjan Roy:Everything else I don't know.

37:38Big Technology Podcast:Well, I would argue that they're not like, I mean, clearly they're ascendant right now, but I would still argue that OpenAI is the leader. But I think coding is going to be very interesting because that is the use case right now. That's clearly economically valuable and exploding. In fact, I think some of the numbers on Anthropic paid subscribers are quite impressive. Actually, I have them in my inbox. You want me to read them? Read them to me. All right, let's see. So, let's see. Free users on Claude are up more than 60 % since January, fastest growth in Claude's history. Daily signups have tripled since November.

38:18Big Technology Podcast:Every single day... Okay, I'm sorry. I'm just making sure that this is on the record. Every single day this week has consecutively broken the record for Claude's largest ever day of signups, and paid subscribers have more than doubled since October. people are staying and upgrading because they value claude's most advanced capabilities and consistently say it sharpens their own thinking so it's more than a super bowl bump they're saying it's adoption from months before the ad campaign so they're doing really well i think that the the coding fight is going to narrow but a year from now i think they're still going to be uh in the lead and i still think that will be the biggest use case for these models as the vibe

38:59Ranjan Roy:coding stuff continues what do you think well i'll differ again as as my the company work for writer autonomous knowledge work is where we play claude co-work is in there manis is kind of one of the only other competitors really i'm still standing by my prediction that that's going to be the big trend of the year it's self-interested in talk my book but really and i gotta say i was it's been interesting to me because like how claude code has been the entry point for most people because like our company, we only work with enterprises. So it's not a consumer product. So just not as many people feeling it.

39:34Ranjan Roy:But I just say like, I think you get it now, right? Like in Claude Code, it gives you that feeling of like what I've been trying to say since October of like actual autonomous agentic work, like agents out there doing stuff for you that actually works with many steps. And you feel it now, right? I heard you talking about that.

39:54Big Technology Podcast:I feel it, yes. But I also think there's a long way to go. Although it's done a great job building some internal tools for me, I have to say.

40:00Ranjan Roy:Okay. You're pro-agentic now. You're coming around.

40:04Big Technology Podcast:I'm feeling the agentic. I'm feeling it. But I'm not, I'm not, I don't haven't fully drank the Kool-Aid like you have. Okay. We have to, go ahead.

40:13Ranjan Roy:I was going to say, what I've actually come away with is it's the word agent and agentic was so just beaten down and kind of like mischaracterized for all of 2025. 25 that's why everyone's just has a hard time saying the word agentic whereas in reality all this what's happening is it's act this is actually agentic that this is what we were promised but we just heard it for so long and it wasn't working or none of it made sense that that's why people

40:41Big Technology Podcast:people are uncomfortable saying it no here's a i think this is a good uh distinction of where we sit you are happy to you believe that ai will this agentic stuff will eventually be good enough to take the shots and i'm like do not take the shots let us if we're gonna have to shoot let a

40:59Ranjan Roy:human do it okay that's maybe that is that's the breakdown yeah okay i think you're far too trusting

41:08Big Technology Podcast:of it but anyway we'll go go down that rabbit hole another day or you can respond if you want

41:14Ranjan Roy:no i think that that's that's a reasonable characterization that's gonna i like i like uh our regular standing debate around is it the product or the model probably is a little more tasteful than should AI take the shot or humans take the shot.

41:32Big Technology Podcast:But these are both real questions.

41:34Ranjan Roy:These are both real questions. Yeah. Yeah.

41:36Big Technology Podcast:All right. I'm going to take a break and come back. We're going to come back after this and we're going to talk about Jack Dorsey laying off 4 ,000 at block. And then we're going to talk about the Citrini research paper in the time we have left that caused this sell-off in the market. We'll be back right after this.

42:20Big Technology Podcast:Now, try it out for free.

42:50Big Technology Podcast:proactive. And by the way, this is coming for others as well. What do you think about that, Ranjan?

42:56Ranjan Roy:This one killed me, I got to say.

43:03Ranjan Roy:I have two kind of minds here. One is, and again, as we've been discussing today, everything is comms and marketing in my mind. And it really just feels like, again, blocks, revenue growth has been slowing, profitability. 2025 was not, it wasn't a bad year, but it's certainly like they were a company that saw incredible growth during COVID and it's been slowing. So like the stock's down 75%. It's overall, business is not great. So to say it's AI kind of bothers me. It feels like a cop-out versus, listen, like a lot of big tech, we're a little bloated, we overhired, we're just trying to right-size the business a little bit.

43:54Ranjan Roy:To me, that's what this is. And again, I'm saying that as someone who genuinely believes workforces are going to get transformed and there's going to be some problems and like dislocation in the industry. I felt this one was just kind of Jack being like AI when he has to lay off a bunch of people. Right.

44:15Big Technology Podcast:And I think we should give the context here, right? So Block is profitable. It's a profitable company making these moves. And still it's up 14 % today after the news. So here's what I'll say about it. This is not the first time that Block has been doing layoffs this year. Block did layoffs earlier in February. This is from Wired. After hundreds of workers were laid off in early February from Jack Dorsey's Block, some of the people remaining at the company say the internal culture has devolved to a point where performance anxiety is running rampant, using generative AI is required, and overall morale is rapidly deteriorating.

44:56Big Technology Podcast:Listen to this. Black employees are currently expected to send an update email to Dorsey every week, who then uses generative AI to summarize the thousands of messages. I don't know if this is the most effective use of the technology and I hate to make the argument here, but is Jack onto something? And are we going to see more of this? Because the idea that a CEO could get a weekly email from all their employees, thousands of employees, throw them into a generative AI engine, get a feel of what's going on in the company, that his reports can do the same with their legions of employees and become more effective through that.

45:43Is that kind of where this technology is heading?

45:47Ranjan Roy:I mean, it was interesting when I read that. On one hand, to me, that actually would be the wrong process because if you're asking everyone to give you essentially sell themselves and the work they're doing on a weekly basis and using that as your foundation for understanding the state of your company, it's going to be biased positive.

46:17Ranjan Roy:it and Jack's just sitting there thinking everything's great. So I think, but it's funny that to me that you took that as a negative. Cause again, like it is kind of, you don't think it's cool at all. The idea that now you can kind of manage in different ways that like you can act at scale that never would have thought possible before, like really getting a view that's semi true or at least versus having like a bunch of people spend a month doing a report that you're going to have like an all hands meeting or a board meeting where they update you that you can actually

46:52Big Technology Podcast:have more real-time feedback like that you don't like i don't think i'm criticizing that uh oh you're not let me tell you this i i think instinctively i you know i'm on the side of workers here i think it kind of it's kind of gross that ceo is instead of talking with them having AI summarize them, summarize their notes and making them write these notes. I mean, just think about how much work you have to write and that gets fed in. You're probably writing with AI. You're probably almost certainly using it.

47:20Ranjan Roy:Your agent is talking to Jack's agent is what's happening here.

47:23Big Technology Podcast:But ultimately, you know, I think I have to get past that. I actually think that if I was running a company of that size, I would do this. I really think it is a great way to stay on top of a company, actually. I don't think it makes the company 50 % more efficient. And it's like natural to get these quotes that I read from SFGate from employees who just don't like the mandating of AI and also aren't happy that half the company is leaving. But maybe the truth lies somewhere in the middle. and I think we should really focus on the warning, so to speak, that Jack gave to everybody else saying that, you know, I just think we're early and I'm going to be honest about it and I expect many others to do the same thing.

48:09Big Technology Podcast:Because I got this note from somebody who's worked with Jack in the past. This block news is going to cascade hard. Jack just put the question to every CEO in tech and maybe beyond of whether they are carrying dead weight that could be shed. if a few more tech companies pull moves of this magnitude, and we know they will, then the odds of it crossing over increase tremendously. I would say it sounds right. And probably we're going to have many tech companies, CEOs saying, and by the way, they know that Jack can run a bloated company. I mean, look at what happened with Twitter, but saying, you know, maybe we don't have to do 50, but can we do 20?

48:44Big Technology Podcast:It's a little bit scary.

48:46Ranjan Roy:I think it's scary, but when the hiring at these companies was up by 100 % or 200 % in a condensed amount of time based off of extrapolated revenue and growth numbers from COVID, we weren't all complaining. I think I'm almost cynical isn't quite the right word, but I don't know. I know a lot of people at a lot of tech companies that get a lot of money for not a lot of work. It's become the case increasingly more so over the last five years, seven years. The Googles and the Facebooks for a while, I would say. But like there is like it's one sector of the economy that became the most valuable sector of the economy for a 15 year period or whatever it is, 10 year period.

49:37Ranjan Roy:and it became bloated. And now, like, to me, AI, what it's doing, it's just kind of like the value of work and software and technology that we had assigned to it over the last decade is not the same. And that's happened to many, many other industries over time and it causes disruption. But to me, that's almost like natural business cycle rather than, again, I'm like not too doomer about it. and maybe that's short-sighted, but it's not that different than other shifts that have happened over time.

50:14Big Technology Podcast:Yeah, I guess you could condense two 75 % effort email jobs today into one email job if you have generative AI. But I also think, as we have this conversation, I don't think either of us are going to discount the fact that there's real people in these jobs and this really sucks. uh and you know especially now we're like in a no hire no fire time period that for every person that gets laid off at a place like block it's just like it's a disaster in each one of those

50:46Ranjan Roy:cases and i don't want to leave that out no no i that's that's the problem about all this it's like i don't want to shortchange i mean getting laid off sucks and like yeah it is just it's it's it's sad, but it's also like, does Metallica and Benson Boone need to play Dreamforce? And is that like the sign of a healthy industry or an industry that might be getting a bit soft? I ask you. Benson Boone and just one of them, Metallica or Benson Boone, but - Look, as long as we keep Metallica, right?

51:22Big Technology Podcast:We got to keep Metallica. I don't know.

51:23Ranjan Roy:I'd rather, that always kind of saddens me that they went, that they're playing a dream force. Benson Boone, put him up there. Not Metallica.

51:33Big Technology Podcast:This is going to be embarrassing. I don't even know who Benson Boone is. He's the guy who,

51:36Ranjan Roy:he did the flip at the Grammys now? No?

51:41Big Technology Podcast:No idea who that is.

51:42Ranjan Roy:All right.

51:43Big Technology Podcast:So maybe you cut him. Maybe you keep him and you cut Metallica and then keep your employees. That would be my preference, maybe. I think I'm going to create an agent for you

51:52Ranjan Roy:to keep up better with pop culture, Alex.

51:55Big Technology Podcast:Well, I would like that. I would have to filter that agent's emails. Just too much. But by the way, so here's where this becomes a real problem. Is if every company, I don't know, I actually don't think Jack is right. We're going to talk about it in a moment. But even with these AI tools, the software engineering employment numbers are going up fairly quickly, which is fascinating. but if jack is right in the case that he is um that could be rough i mean if you think about every company coming out and doing i mean we've seen amazon do these big layoffs right like every company comes out and does a 20 layoff that is uh that's tough that's tough if you're a tech worker but the amount of money everyone in tech has made relative to every other industry

52:46Ranjan Roy:over the last 10 to 15 years like i think that that's going to be actually one of the more interesting things politically, how this all plays out, I think, is that it's targeting, this is causing a disruption in a sector that got a lot bigger, but is still a small percentage of the overall kind of like employment in the economy. So do you think people will be as strongly reacting or up in arms around this, or it's going to kind of be like, and again, as someone who works in tech, I'm saying this, that like, it's just, it's harder for me to be like that saddened by it, given just how these companies have been able to operate for a long time.

53:30Big Technology Podcast:I mean, if you're asking me whether there's going to be an outpouring of national sympathy for tech workers, I don't believe so. I mean, this is, remember, this is a country where many people celebrated the Palisades fire when they saw that there were people in a different socioeconomic status than them that lost their houses. So I don't really feel like we're a nation of empathy right now, at least. We should be, but we're not. All right. Speaking of cascading crises, let's end with this. I'm sure you saw this Citrini letter talked about the 2028 global intelligence crises. I'll try to summarize it as best as I can.

54:04Big Technology Podcast:Basically, this research firm who may or may not have shorts, I don't know 100%, but it's been speculated that they do and some of the companies that have tanked because of this letter, basically looked at what happened if generative AI works. They write, it should have been clear all along that a single GPU in North Dakota generating the output previously attributed to 10 ,000 white collar workers in midtown Manhattan is more economic pandemic than economic panacea. So basically they say, look what's going to happen. There's going to be a human intelligent displacement spiral where people will automate jobs way.

54:39Big Technology Podcast:Maybe this is kind of where that Jack memo can actually end up in the bad scenario, right? Because then you have people with their mortgages. They can't pay them. Stocks go down. And then, you know, there's so much of our economy, so many large parts of our economy that are based off of wanting to avoid annoyance, not wanting to cancel certain things and not disputing certain fees. The agent goes out and cancels these things and takes down those fees. And then all of a sudden, consumer spending is down, growth is down, and private equity that depends on all this starts to go up in flames. And even these apps, you can build your own delivery apps, for instance.

55:23Big Technology Podcast:And then all these displaced white, so those businesses go away and all these displaced white collar workers end up taking blue collar jobs and there's just no jobs left in the economy. I think I boiled it down. That's kind of the argument. I think you can tell by the tone of my voice. I'm not, I'm not convinced that they're right here. What was your reaction?

55:43Ranjan Roy:So my reaction to the actual content of the piece, and then there's my reaction to like, actually kind of like it causing a stock market sell-off are two different things. I think, I don't know, it was a good piece of, it was like an interesting piece of writing. It was like, and it is, it raises these kinds of questions I thought were like trying to assign kind of like value to the idea. Like if we're locked into subscriptions, we forget about, But imagine if I tell you, imagine you have an agent that is actually able to track your Netflix, Disney +, Hulu, all of your utilization of those services.

56:25Ranjan Roy:And then the ones you're not using, it goes and cancels them for you. That sounds pretty good, right?

56:31Big Technology Podcast:Oh, I would love that. Yeah, exactly. But the argument is that that will cause cascading economic problems.

56:37Ranjan Roy:But this is where if that is the foundation of the U.S. economy, that's the more terrifying part to me than the actual unwinding of it, if that's the case. So I think that part of it is, I don't know, it was interesting, just like the kind of questions it raised. There's a lot of like, I saw arguments over like it using DoorDash as an example. And I actually do agree with the idea that that was like, and as not the biggest fan of DoorDash is readers of margins will know, I do think they're going to be the hardest to displace out of any, given it's a marketplace, there's like physical labor elements of it.

57:20So I thought that part, like there's definitely weaknesses in it. To me, the idea of some kind of like cascading potential downward spiral here, I do think, I don't know, it presented a pretty like interesting,

57:40Ranjan Roy:consistent narrative that actually told a good story. So I see why it had the impact it did. But I don't know. My hot take on this one is I think it raised actually a more interesting issue is that, again, the state of the current stock market, the valuations of a lot of companies have gone in the same direction for a very long time. And I think it is more unmasking just general unease and worries about valuations as opposed to it's like AI is going to destroy society. And people, again, it's an excuse to just kind of knee-jerk sell things that you're sitting there on paper have just been marked up insanely over the last number of years.

58:23Ranjan Roy:But you just you don't feel it's actually valued that valuable. That's kind of how I am reading it.

58:30Big Technology Podcast:I like that take. I like that take a lot. I think we're agreeing with each other a little too much. Yeah, I know. That feels spot on to me. And, you know, it is this, I was asked about a version of this on CNBC this week, and I had to cite the something big is happening paper. I think this is kind of what it is. There is this belief that something big is happening. It is, in a way. The question is what the magnitude is. And there's this instinctive race to go and say, you know, it's going to take our jobs and destroy our economy. The one issue that I had with that paper, and this is sort of my core issue, is it just wasn't imaginative at all.

59:08Big Technology Podcast:It didn't think that somebody who's displaced has like any dreams of their own that they might go build now that these tools exist. Right. And that it sort of felt the economy is stagnant. I really believe that like if these tools work the way that you think that they're going to work, then, you know, they're just not going to cause vast economic displacement. displacement. This is the line that I really hated. In every way, AI was exceeding expectations and the market was AI. The only problem was the economy was not. I just think that if the AI exceeds all expectations, then the economy is going to become AI and enable people to grow much more than they have previously.

59:53Big Technology Podcast:And so the economy will be AI and the economy will grow. That's just my perspective.

59:58Ranjan Roy:Yeah. Do you know what? I saw this stat around the number of professional photographers where there was worry that once first digital cameras and then phone cameras came out that it would destroy all the entire industry. I mean, I guess this is Jevin's paradox in action, whereas like actually the like increase in access to taking photos created massive new demand in industries around photography. And like it was actually this nice little encapsulation I felt around like what can happen. Like suddenly now everyone needs professional quality photos or in the past you wouldn't have cared as much.

1:00:38Ranjan Roy:And because you could take photos on your phone, it created social media. And like, like the, there is whatever that means for society. That's another question. But like there, there's that argument that it was like a really nice, simple picture of in the last 20 years of our, our lifetime, seeing something that could have been pure doom actually turning into something like in a positive, unexpected way.

1:01:05Big Technology Podcast:That's it. I mean, if you think that everything is static and that people don't want to do new things or grow or they're satisfied with whatever they're doing, then you believe the Cetrini paper. If you don't, if you believe that there's growth and the economy changes and people find new things to do, then you don't believe it. And in fact, this is from Citadel, which wrote a rebuttal. The number of software developer jobs being posted on Indeed is far outpacing the total number of job posting in terms of overall. in terms of percentage growth. So that says everything you need to know. If AI is able to code much better than so many people now, why are software engineering jobs outpacing the rest?

1:01:46Big Technology Podcast:It's just that when you have these tools and you're able to be more productive, you're able to do the things that you couldn't do previously. And so you want to do them. And you don't shrink into a corncob and say, I'm done because of these things. And that's why these papers like this, the Citrini paper annoy me because they just don't have any imaginative thought and they're not realistic about the way the world works. And they scare people and the fear translates into clicks. And God, I guess I'm being very harsh on them right now, but I'll keep with it. It just seems to me to be the worst way to do things.

1:02:22Ranjan Roy:And I think the other worst way to do things is the idea that the stock market is so brittle right now that an AI sci-fi imaginative paper can cause a sell-off is still get a handle, everybody. Come on. Come on, stock market. It's okay. Just take a breather here.

1:02:44Big Technology Podcast:I mean, if anyone shouldn't be freaking out, it's the stock market. We know that the market reacts so coolly to any bit of stuff. Relax, God damn it. Just not a sub stack. Not a sub stack. Not a freaking sub stack. Like obviously Substack was out and being like, we move the market. It's like, is this the way you want to move the market? Yeah, yeah. I don't think so. All right. Let's pack it up and go home and we'll cool off and come back next week and hopefully the world will still be standing. Does that sound like a good plan?

1:03:15Ranjan Roy:I think, I hope so. I'll see you next week.

1:03:18Big Technology Podcast:All right, see you next week. Thank you everyone for listening and we'll see you next time on Big Technology Podcast. Amazon bietet allen frischgebackenen Eltern in den Logistikzentren extra Familienboni. So wie Anton, der gerade seine neugeborene Tochter im Arm hält. Ihr Glucksen ist für ihn das schönste Geräusch der Welt. Das heißt, vielleicht ist das Geräusch das schönste von allen. Niklas hier von e-commerce.de. Wir bauen eigene Marken über Amazon, Kaufland, eigenen Onlineshop und Co. auf mit ganz normalen Menschen. und das funktioniert gerade besser als in den letzten Jahren wegen neuen AI-Automatisierung.

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